Russell Hopfenberg, at the Duke University School of Medicine, has written that global food supply is the variable which best accounts for human carrying capacity, and that human population will continue to grow as long as food supply increases. He states that birth control is useless at a large scale. Locally, individual families who limit the number of children they have, simply leave more food available for those who don’t choose to limit their families. Therefore, the only way you can lower human population is to limit food availability.

Even though birth control won’t solve the world’s problems, women ought to have the right to control their lives and their bodies, and the way that some women have been brainwashed and deluded is explained quite well by Jill Lepore:

Lepore’s article about the history of how birth control became politicized is excellent. If a woman’s right to control her own body and life can be taken away because of political vote-getting strategies, I wish “Right to Lifers” would realize they’ve been duped and get a grip on reality, women’s rights, and the ecological effects too-many-people are having on the planet. Sigh. Not going to happen. A few points made:

Nixon came out against abortion to win the Catholic vote. Abortion wasn’t a partisan issue until Republicans made it one.

“…cuts to family planning represent the opening salvo in an all-out war on women’s health.”

Many women, especially poor women, have been desperate to limit their families, but for a long time information on contraception was illegal.